


The Piper's Promise

by morphaileffect



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-03
Updated: 2011-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-23 09:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/248684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphaileffect/pseuds/morphaileffect





	1. Guido

I. Guido

  
It was far too late at night for little boys to still be awake. But Guido wasn't just any little boy. Guido was eight years old and he had spent most of his life locked away from the rest of the world.

His tiny body was covered in boils, burns, scabs and bruises - he could not remember a time when it wasn't otherwise. He could not remember the last time he ate or slept.

And the worst part was that he didn't know why this was happening to him. Why his adoptive mother and father came down to the basement just to hurt him and tell him things he couldn't understand. Why it was his fault their family was so miserable. Nothing that they said to him made sense.

Every night at around this time, Guido shrank into as small a ball as he could, to fit in the tiny square of moonlight that streamed onto the floor, from the window just above his reach. This was his only superstition: that if he managed to stay in the light, no monsters leaping out of the dark could touch him. He moved when the light moved, until he lost consciousness, lost track of time, and the light left him behind.

He was stuck in this wretched state, this cage of flesh, of pain punctuated by nothingness. Every day, at the age of 8, the boy on the floor fought desperately for his life.

 _Guido._

The boy stirred where he lay. He was alone in the room, wasn't he? Why did that voice sound so near?

 _Guido. Open your eyes._

He did as the gentle voice commanded.

Then Guido saw that a young man all in black was leaning over him, blocking the light from outside the window, that smile and those strangely colored eyes casting a shadow upon him.

"Who are..." Guido managed, with his throat still soldered shut by blows. "...how..."

 _Don't speak._  A finger of a gloved hand against the young man's lips.  _Come with me._  That hand reaching out.  _I have a surprise for you._

The boy took the hand that was offered, not because he felt he had a choice. And when he was pulled up, he was surprised to find that he could stand.

He didn't know where his strength was coming from. When he looked into the young man's strangely-colored eyes, and that cold otherworldly voice filled his ears, the only emotion he could recognize within himself was fear.

  
***

  
Guido and the stranger were walking down a corridor filled with mist. He thought he could smell something - a familiar sickening smell. But it was too hard to see, how did the inside of the house get like this?

 _Don't let go,_  the young man said. Guido could barely see his face through the white chill enveloping them.  _If I lose you, I won't come back for you._

Guido gripped the young man's gloved hand tighter. It was all he could see - the large hand covered in black leather, its long, slender fingers wrapped around his. With every step he took in this man's company, he felt less afraid.

The mist kept him from seeing anything. He might have stepped out of his house (the door must have been bolted shut. How could they have gotten out? For that matter, how could they have left the basement so easily? The door was always locked) and he might have been walking down a long cobblestone road with the young man, but he wasn't sure.

The young man waved his hand once, and the mist slowly cleared... opening up into a vast stretch of land green. Guido did not remember this part of the city. Then again, he had never been out of his basement cell long enough to commit any part of the city to memory.

A meadow?

And not just any meadow - it was a meadow in daylight. Which surprised the child, because he was certain he had not been walking long enough to catch the dawn; he still remembered the touch of moonlight on his bare skin.

But there it was - a meadow filled with sunlight, trees, grass and flowers, such as he had never seen before. He could not tell if it was beautiful or not. All he knew was that it was  _bright,_  too bright.

He thought he could hear the sound of other children laughing - a familiar music, one that echoed in his basement cell some days, one that haunted his dreams. But there were no other children in sight.

He should not be here. Mamma and Papà were going to be angry.

"This is where you will stay, for now, Guido." The young man's hold on his hand loosened. His voice... it was no longer as cold as before. What was happening? "Go on, join the others."

In answer, Guido threw his entire weight onto the stranger. He wrapped his arms around the stranger's waist and hung on for dear life. _Don't leave me here,_  his embrace said.  _I don't belong here. Take me back._

"Guido..." The young man gently pulled away from the boy, but reached down to hold the boy's hands in both of his own. He dropped down on one knee before the boy. Guido saw that the mask-like smile was still on the young man's face.

"You're scared, aren't you," he said, brushing locks of unruly black hair back from the child's forehead. How light his touch was, Guido noted, how different from everything familiar. "Don't be. I took you here because this place is safe. Here, the people who hurt you will not be able to find you. Here, you will never want for anything."

Guido's lower lip shook. He didn't want to cry in front of this stranger - he got beaten for crying, and he got beaten for  _not_  crying, so he wasn't sure what to do.

"Tell me what you want, Guido," the stranger instructed. "I will give it to you."

The boy eventually found the strength to say (in a voice that did not croak, out of a throat that suddenly no longer felt battered and sore) "I want... get out." He did not say "go home" or "go back to Mamma and Papà," because that was not what he wanted. He simply wanted to be rid of the bright place.

The stranger sighed. But it wasn't an unhappy sigh - perhaps it even seemed  _pleased_  for a split second.

"One of the very few," the young man mysteriously remarked, as he laid a hand on Guido's head. "I should have known. Not to worry - remember I am your friend, Guido. I will always be there for you. If you wish to return here, all you must do is close your eyes and call my name."

Before the little boy could ask, the stranger said "My name is Mukuro. Can you say that?"

"Mu-ku-ro..." the boy attempted. The stranger's smile grew even wider.

"Very good, child. Now..." He looked into Guido's eyes, and Guido thought he saw something change in the stranger's red right eye - something too fast for him to catch or comprehend. "Look closely. I'm going to show you a magic trick."

  
***

  
In the morning, fear hit the streets of Venice.

A run-down house in the poor quarter of the city was found with its doors wide open in the middle of a cold autumn evening. When a neighbor walked in, he saw not only corpses of the husband and wife who used to live here, but he saw their blood and bits of flesh splattered all over the room nearest the door.

There were no weapons. There were no witnesses. No one knew who could have done such a horrible thing, and how to find this person so he or she could not terrorize the city again. The police did their best to contain the situation, knowing full well that it meant having to withhold information from the populace.

\- And the information they'd had to keep to themselves were the most gruesome parts of the story. It would appear that the couple - a drug-addicted, debt-ridden, childless (as far as anyone knew) pair - had torn each other apart with their bare hands and teeth. They had literally killed themselves like two monsters or wild beasts... and no one could imagine why.

The people of Venice were simply assured that the police were thoroughly investigating this "suspected homicide," and tracking down the couple's killer.

Among the people who had to hear the police lie through their teeth like this was a kindly middle-aged schoolteacher named Benedetto Greco - but unlike the rest of the city, he stood unconvinced.

For last night, Benedetto had a dream about a bruised and battered little boy trapped in a basement. It was only a dream: he could not step forward, or even call out to the child, as he would have done when awake.

In Benedetto's dream a young man, dressed all in black, came for this child... and in his dream, the young man led the boy out of his basement prison, out of the house, expertly wading through a ravaged wooden floor decorated with human blood and entrails (signs of a slaughter, signs of a war - who had lived in this house? What had they done to deserve this?) to walk through the open front door.

Together, the young man and the little boy unhurriedly cut through the mist covering the streets of the poor quarter. The young man led the boy to a brighter-lit corner of a market area. Benedetto knew the place; he passed by it every day, on the way to the school he worked in.

The young man bent down on one knee, looked intently at the child's face. Then he snapped his fingers, and the child pitched forward, into his arms.

The young man's gloved hand stroked the unconscious child's hair once. Then he laid the boy down under a stall, small enough for a child to fit snugly. He covered the child with a large piece of canvas - not good enough for a blanket, in the killing chill.

Then, in Benedetto's dream, the young man looked at him.

At  _him._

 _This one is yours to care for, Benedetto._  he heard in his head, even if the young man's smiling lips never moved.

He had never before seen such a murderous smile.

 _Treat him well. I will take him when I need him._

When Benedetto woke, alone as always in his bed, he was filled with a sense of dread, and - to his greater disconcertment - purpose. The dream had felt prophetic.

He told himself: he was a man of logic and reason. What would it benefit him to heed his dreams?

But all this was before Benedetto heard the news from his landlady about the couple who had been killed in their own home. Who could do such a thing, he asked her, what had they done to deserve it? But all of a sudden he felt a chill go down his spine, and he asked no more questions.

  
***

  
On the morning of the murder, Benedetto passed by the market area, as always, on his way to work. The stalls were the same stalls he mostly ignored every day.

Except...

This one. This one deserted stall, hidden away in a warm corner. It called to Benedetto out of his dreams, with a voice that came from some other reality.

Benedetto approached it. His aging shoulders were tensing up with dread. He looked under the stall and -

There.

At first he was a shape hidden under a large piece of canvas - solid to the touch, unmistakable. Benedetto reached out to pull the canvas away gently, and the shape underneath stirred, woke.

And started screaming.

Time seemed to stop then. All heads turned to the source of the noise, at the child under the stall and the kindly schoolteacher on his knees by the stall, desperately trying to assure the child he meant no harm. Everyone watched. Everyone waited.

The child raised his arms in front of his face, turned his head away, as if he was afraid of something. Or if something was hurting him. It took a while for Benedetto Greco to realize it was only the light. The child wasn't used to being out in broad daylight?

When words failed to calm the child, the man only reached out. He held the child's battered body close, not caring about the filth and bloodstains ruining his nice clothes, not caring about the screaming in his ears, which steadily subsided.

Soon the child stopped struggling altogether, letting this savior from out of nowhere rock him back and forth.

"Hush now. Don't be afraid. It's okay. It's okay. Poor child. You're going to be all right."


	2. Takeshi

II. Takeshi

 _Mukuro-sama._

A tiny voice roused him from sleep. A girl's voice.

Chrome? No... the voice was was much younger. It didn't come the waking world. It came from the waiting place, the mist-filled room between the waking world and the bright meadow.

 _Mukuro-sama._

The waiting place was still his realm; he was able to find his way to it in the blink of an eye. Soon he was standing before a little girl - a lively, lovely child of six.

He remembered this one. It was the orphan who had been bleeding to death. He had followed her flame to an empty field, to a tiny battered body, left to die by a group of young men from the city. Mukuro had stepped inside to where she hid, breathed life back into her crushed lungs.

She would have been like Chrome - but he had gotten to her in time. The hospital was able to patch her up, and in just a few months she was walking and talking again. Her body had been traumatized, but fully functional.

But when Mukuro came to her and asked if she wanted to find the ones who had attacked her, she took the hand he offered, and she walked with him through her own nightmares, and showed him their faces.

Mukuro had found her assailants easily, destroyed them in their sleep - and then Manami was his. She worshipped him, even before he found her a good family who would love and take care of her in spite of her scars, her empty stares.

"Mukuro-sama!" the child cried. In her dreams, her stares were not empty, and they were fixed only on him. "You came! You came!" She ran into his arms, young enough to know he would never turn her away.

"Somebody saved Manami today," she volunteered, all sunshine and honesty. "Somebody very nice."

"Oh?" He smiled brilliantly. "What happened, Manami-chan? Did anyone try to hurt you again?"

"Nooo..." She shook her head, made nondescript motions in the air with her scrawny arms. "There were looots of cars... and lots of screeeeching, and - "

A traffic accident? Mukuro was not surprised. In the waking world, Manami was often distant to the point of absent, called to attention only by steady eye contact and hearing her name several times. She was too young, also, to manage crossing the street by herself.

"And, and this  _oniichan_..." She grabbed his sleeve, started tugging at it. "Mukuro-sama, this oniichan saved Manami. Manami wants to see Oniichan!"

Mukuro shook his head. "No one must see me, Manami-chan. I've told you this, haven't I? Did you forget?"

"But I want Mukuro-sama to meet him, too!" She pouted. "Because he was nice and strong and handsome and - and he was nice and he saved Manami!"

Well, Mukuro told himself after some thought, it wasn't as if it would take a lot of his time and energy. He wouldn't need to actually  _meet_ this person, as Manami wanted - he could just reach into her memory and walk with her in it. She was six years old, she trusted him implicitly, and she would not know the difference.

Besides, he was curious. Who was this savior Manami so badly wanted him to meet? Manami - like Guido, Ken, Chikusa, Chrome and all the others - was special to him. He would like to see this person who had rescued one of his chosen.

"All right," he said. "Take me to him." Happily, she took his hand.

His red right eye gleamed once.

  
***

  
They were in a private hospital ward.

It was nighttime. Mukuro looked around. It could be any hospital ward - these things had a way of looking the same. But if this was where Manami last saw the person who saved her, it was safe to presume it was somewhere within Tokyo.

"There he is!" she cried, tugging at his sleeve urgently. "There he is, Mukuro-sama!"

He followed Manami to the only bed in the room.

He looked at the teenager lying there with his head bandaged, hooked up to crude machines. His damaged and poorly-patched together exterior looked surprisingly peaceful, showing precious little of the struggle within. Manami's sharp mind had recalled every detail perfectly, down to the tempo of the boy's soft, barely perceptible breathing.

It can't be.

Why this one...

"There he is," Manami said in a whisper. "He's sleeping... he was sleeping when Manami last saw him, too! Oniichan sure sleeps a lot, doesn't he?"

Mukuro didn't answer. He didn't need to look at the life support device; he could tell at a glance that the boy on the bed wasn't merely sleeping.

The boy had no visitors - that was strange, for this one. Mukuro looked over at the cheap analog clock hanging on the wall across the bed. It was 7 o'clock - it probably meant Manami came here when visiting hours were almost over.

The door to the ward was ajar. There were two people talking outside. It impressed him that Manami was able to remember even this. Mukuro abandoned all else for a moment, stepped closer to the door so he could better hear the conversation. 

"It wasn't... just an accident." The first voice was soft, but familiar. It made Mukuro halt in his tracks. "His bones were crushed. And he hasn't fully rested from his last injuries. He - "

"Don't worry too much about that guy, Tenth." The other voice. Not as soft, and not as pleasant, but certainly more familiar to Mukuro. He had been in that head, that body before. "He... he'll pull through. You know how stubborn he can be!"

Mukuro knew it was pointless to look out the door. Outside would be a black hole, or an empty corridor - exactly as Manami remembered it. If she had never seen the young men talking outside, he would not be able to see them in these memories either.

"Reborn says he might die." The tremor in the young Vongola Tenth's voice was unmistakable.

"Tenth..." At a loss for comforting words now. "It's late. Your mother must be worried..."

Then the sound of footsteps vanishing down the corridor outside. Mukuro waited until the sound had faded completely, before turning his attention back to the boy on the bed, and the child who had taken him there.

Manami was leaning over the bed, chattering into the silent patient's ear. Her elbows irreverently rested on the edge of the pillow under the boy's head. "...and you'll like him! For sure! He's really smart and really strong and really nice, just like you! Oniichan... please wake up now. Manami will be sad if you don't." She looked over to the other guest in the room, her large eyes pleading. "Mukuro-sama... what's wrong with Oniichan?"

Mukuro retuned to the child's side, then crouched down low so they could converse.

"Oniichan... he's not just sleeping, is he?"

"No," Mukuro replied. "The accident... it really hurt him, Manami-chan. He's only human, after all."  _Only human_  - somehow it was a funny thing to say, in this situation.

Manami bit her lower lip. Her gaze shifted from Mukuro to her new friend, and back again. She looked like she was about to cry.

"But... but you're going to make him all better, aren't you? Just like you made Manami better?"

He laid a hand on her head. "Manami-chan... I didn't make you all better. The doctors did that. If they've done everything they could, there's nothing more I can do."

 _And you're not Chrome,_  was what he held back from her, because she wouldn't have understood.  _You don't have the power to create your own illusions. You could still have died, if you had not been found in time._

 _And this one... is just like you. But what's strange is, he should have been stronger..._

Before he could even finish talking, she had launched herself onto him, wrapped her thin arms around his neck. She did this with such fury, he remembered the bright flame that had led him to her in the first place.

"Mukuro-sama, it's not fair," she said into his shoulder. "He was really nice and - and before they took him away, he smiled at Manami and said he was going to be fine and - why is it like this? Why is he hurt? Save him, Mukuro-sama - please!"

He studied the still form on the bed. The eyes were closed - Mukuro remembered them brown and laughing, always laughing. Always wide open and ready for anything. That was all he remembered; the boy wasn't the sort he was normally interested in.

"You can save him!" the child cried. "You can! Please promise!"

He had saved her. She had called him just to make this request. So close to him, clinging so tightly, how could he refuse her anything?

"Manami-chan. This person. I..."

  
***

  
At times Mukuro could forget his body was still trapped in the Vendicare prison - chained and shackled, fed and controlled and kept alive by tubes.

At times he could forget he was slowly disintegrating.

These were the times when he was walking through other people's dreams. 

He loved the dreams of children best. Those bored him less, with their inexplicable nightmares, their simple desire, anger, pain and indignation magnified several hundred times.

And anyone who wished to be a child could simply dream him/herself as one. It wasn't the same as actually  _being_  a child, of course - the mechanics were different, the symbolisms less intricate.

Mukuro didn't particularly care about whether or not  _this_  particular target chose to see himself in his own dreams as a child, or not. All Mukuro was concerned about was that he had promised Manami that he was going to try and rescue the boy who had rescued her.

And that this was not a one-way trade.

This was an injured Vongola in the palm of his hands. And not just any Vongola - one personally important to the Tenth. If he ever had an avenue to destroy the family, short of crippling the untouchable Tenth himself, it would be this.

Mukuro's consciousness shot through the void, following the beacon that was the bright blue flame of the Vongola's Rain Guardian. Even then, it was clear enough that the blue flame stood out - this one was a human among humans, asserting its difference in the space between truths.

  
***

  
And Yamamoto Takeshi smiled at him.

It was a default reaction, Mukuro knew - a child who was born to laugh at everything as if the world was one big cosmic joke, would greet any stranger with a smile, even if there was no real welcoming or joy in it.

(The human mind is highly selective. If Yamamoto Takeshi decided that as a child, he would not recognize Rokudou Mukuro, or anyone he met later in life, it would be so. Mukuro was never inclined to challenge this natural thing; if there was anything he liked about the human mind, it was that it's full of chaos just waiting to be exploited.)

They met at the edge of the bright meadow. The boy of around age five sat with his thin legs splayed out, underneath a large hardwood tree. The tree itself was nothing Mukuro recognized - its branches were thick, gnarled and lush, casting an ominous shadow over the boy and the area of earth within their reach.

Happy sounds of children laughing and playing permeated the air, and yet - there was no other child in sight.

The little boy's hair was black, short-cropped. His brown eyes were even wider than Mukuro remembered them to be. The child held a stick in one hand (little more than a twig, really - it must have fallen off the tree) and was tossing pebbles in the air with the other. Without ceremony - without much attention, even - the boy attempted hit each pebble with the stick he held, before it fell to the ground.

It was an automatic motion; clearly he was doing it merely to pass the time. Mukuro approached him, but he didn't even stop playing this silly game. It would seem, also, that he was not even inclined to wonder why he never ran out of pebbles, when he wasn't exactly sitting at a particularly rocky spot.

Then again, Mukuro never figured Yamamoto Takeshi to be the kind who asked unanswerable questions.

Mukuro sat on his haunches, watched the child for a bit. Then, "You know," he greeted, "it's no fun playing all by yourself."

The boy tossed another pebble into the air.

"Wouldn't you like to play with the others? Don't you think it might be fun?"

"Yeah," the boy responded vaguely, not caring if he missed hitting the pebble because he was listening to this stranger talk. "Maybe."

Mukuro detected a measure of loneliness in the boy's voice. He zeroed in on it and made his own voice gentler.

"You could stay here forever if you want. With other boys and girls like you. Everything that ever made you feel pain - you will never remember them. Nothing can hurt you anymore."

 _If I can't revive you, I can at least end your suffering._  This wouldn't constitute breaking his promise to Manami, he said to himself - he would still be saving the Vongola Rain Guardian. He just wouldn't be bringing him back to life.

"Tell me what you want, Takeshi," he said outright. "What will make you happy?"

The boy stopped playing and held his stick loosely in one hand. When he looked straight into Mukuro's eyes, Mukuro thought he saw a flash of recognition there.

But Mukuro smiled at the boy, and the boy relaxed, like any child would, in the face of all the promises in the world made real.


	3. Mukuro

III. Mukuro

  
It was too late when Mukuro realized he should not have done this so soon. Even if the young guardian did not have much time left, he could have waited another day.

Just searching for Yamamoto Takeshi's deepest, dearest desires had been difficult. At best, the boy's delusions of grandeur were limited to becoming a baseball MVP. It didn't even involve the mafia. Or rising to the top of any kind of ladder, just so he could step on other people's heads.

No. It wasn't anything so common or simple. His deepest, dearest desire was this:

A fine summer day. A day with no clouds in the sky. And a festival quarter that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see.

There were games, rides, food and trinkets everywhere one looked. There was something to eat or play with or just plain  _like_. It might have been the happiest and most colorful place ever imaginable - everyone was smiling or laughing, and there was always loud, lively music playing.

Mukuro wove through the intricate mess he had pulled out from inside Yamamoto Takeshi's mind. He was impressed, in a way - he had no idea that the boy's idea of "heaven" was so detailed. Very few people knew exactly what kind of world they wanted to have if it was their last day on earth.

This wonderland was Yamamoto Takeshi's last day: a festival that had no end.

This was definitely not a world that Rokudou Mukuro would consider familiar. It was even more childlike than the kinds of paradise that children actually imagined.

Where would one find the boy who had invented this?

He would be on the move, of course. It was well into that neverending day when Mukuro finally found him - and only because he had finally stopped to rest. The teenager in the guise of his five-year-old self was sitting in a shaded area all by himself, kicking his feet in the air, hugging a gigantic teddy bear.

Mukuro followed Yamamoto Takeshi's memories to this point: He had just won a teddy bear in a ball toss. Everyone had crowded around to see the small boy win the biggest prize. It was bigger even than he was, but his father had carried it for him, while his mother had held his hand.

His parents - both of them - had been with him all throughout. The pair of them were off to the rides now, enjoying themselves without him - exactly as he had wanted.

Mukuro walked up to the boy. The boy smiled up at the young man all in black, and it was different from the last time. This time, the boy was happy. This time, he wasn't alone; he was with people he loved, who loved him back, who were family.

 _Family._  The word leapt out of his thoughts. Mukuro noted it down as he greeted: "This is a good place."

The boy only smiled wider. Then looked past the tall youth's shoulder at something in the distance - perhaps his parents waving to him? Another new game that he wanted to play?

"You want to stay here, don't you, Takeshi?"

The boy looked like he didn't want to answer this question, at first. His large brown eyes lost a little of their mirth, and he looked at a lot of other things besides the young man.

Mukuro felt himself growing weaker. He was already considering leaving the child here for another day. It was not  _his_  loss, but a day of rest for Mukuro might mean eons in the make-believe place. He might as well leave the boy for dead.

However, as if he knew this, the boy took a deep breath and replied "Unnm. Nope!"

Mukuro's smile faded. "No? Why not? You can stay here for as long as you like. Isn't this what you want?"

As if in answer, the boy hugged his teddy bear tighter, as tight as his little arms could go. But he stayed like this only for a moment. With dignity and care, almost like an adult would, he set the toy aside.

"Tsuna needs me," the boy said, meeting Mukuro's gaze head-on. "He needs a good right-hand man."

For a second the illusionist froze. Something was wrong.

The happy child leapt off his seat, all but bounced toward the young man all in black. His little yukata changed patterns, colors, before Mukuro's gaze, and it was just one of the many distractions that beset Mukuro as he realized it  _shouldn't have taken so much from him_  to get to this point.

And yet it was happening. His illusions were breaking down, and he had barely felt it. He was certainly feeling it now - the closest sensation an ordinary person would feel was that of a heart attack coming on.

"Niichan!" the child called from closer to the ground, beckoning with his hands. "Here, over here!"

What the hell else was there to do? Mukuro knelt before the child. The child rushed forward, looking eager to tell a secret into his Niichan's ear.

But when he got there, the child only wrapped his arms around the older boy's neck.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Mukuro made the mistake of closing his eyes as the boy said this, and in his perception, the boy's voice had changed back into that of his teenage self. The arms around his neck weighed heavier - belonged to someone older, in a flash.

He dared not open his eyes until this felt right again, until it felt like something he could control.

This was wrong.

This was wrong.

It shouldn't have taken so much...

  
***

  
Then again, he should have known.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in the mist-filled waiting room. The illusions were gone. But he wasn't alone.

"You're still here." Mukuro was the first one to speak.

"I was waiting." Yamamoto greeted him with a wide grin.

He was his almost-grown self again, crouched down to better talk to the boy stretched out in front of him. Any longer, Mukuro thought, and he would start feeling like  _he_  was the one in the hospital, seriously injured and out of commission, while people talked about, around and at him.

"Let me guess," Mukuro groaned as he sat up. "You couldn't get out."

Yamamoto let out an embarrassed chuckle. "Well, at least I wasn't bored!" He stretched out his legs. "She was here, you know... Chrome, I mean."

Was she. Mukuro didn't find this unusual. Chrome sometimes came with him on his excursions in finding the children. She had met Manami, had even played with her sometimes.

"She said she sensed that you were tired," Yamamoto continued, "so she came to me. She didn't know how to take me out of this place yet, but she could at least keep me company while you slept.

"I asked 'Why?' and she said 'Mukuro-sama is working his ass off to save you. You must be worth it.' " Then he laughed. He was the type to laugh at his own jokes, too. "Well, she didn't say those words exactly... but you're a real bad influence on her, you know that?"

Mukuro bowed his head. Chrome was his masterpiece. His Galatea. The vessel for his heart. He could only corrupt her. "I know," he simply answered.

"You know what else she said?" Yamamoto kept on. "She said - inside all of us is a dying will. It's stronger in some, and weaker in others, but we all have it. And for most of us, it's only at the end of our lives that it ever really 'wakes up.' That's when it creates a final illusion - because we're all scared of sliding into nothing. Are you going to hell? Are you going to heaven? It's your dying will that creates heaven or hell for you. It gives you whatever fate you want."

It was clear enough that Yamamoto Takeshi didn't understand all of what he was saying. He said them anyway, studying Mukuro's face for any confirmation. (Too bad - and not just because Mukuro was naturally impossible for any ordinary human to read. The truth was simply not that easy to capture in so few words.)

No need to bother with illusions with this one, Mukuro said to himself; he was built to feel, not to comprehend. And even if Chrome told him everything she knew, she didn't know much. His secrets, his plans for the future, were safe.

"She told me about the kids." Mukuro looked at him, when he said this. The smile on his face had taken on a shade of something reluctant - what was it? Admiration? Pity? "When they join the other kids in that meadow... they don't come back, do they?"

The bright meadow... the threshold of no return. Mukuro still remembered finding Yamamoto Takeshi there, small and forlorn and quiet. And above all, ready to leave the waking world for good.

"That's why you created that meadow in the first place - it's so the kids have a place to go. So they don't... will themselves into a bad place. Because it's hard for kids who never had it easy to even imagine what 'heaven' is supposed to be like."

Mukuro wanted to laugh at the absolute certainty in the other young man's voice. But he found that he couldn't. Perhaps he was still too tired...

"You think too highly of me, Vongola." What the hell, Mukuro could spare the kindness to state the obvious. "I happened to save a few children during my evening strolls... that doesn't mean I'm a saint."

"You saved me," Yamamoto pointed out. "And you didn't have to. You could've been out saving other people too. But why kids? And why only the ones who've been hurt bad?"

At this point Mukuro could have said something, or at the very least just killed the happy bastard here and now, just to bring an early end to this conversation.

But he knew Yamamoto was telling the truth. He could spew some random lie about children having stronger dying will flames than adults, or being easier to use while their flesh was still tender - but at the heart of all his deceptions, there was a reason.

A reason why he only sought the ones who had been damaged, traumatized, forsaken by their own.

"I don't understand why you do the things you do, but..." A pause. An unusually thoughtful look. "...What if we can save them together? All the kids in the world? The two of us?"

It was more than a what-if. And it was certainly nothing Mukuro expected. It made him hold his tongue for a good while.

"What do you say? All it needs is teamwork. I take the daytime. You take the night."

"Fool," he chuckled. Takeshi didn't chuckle. Was Fool being serious, Mukuro wondered? All this talk about saving all the children in the world, when he almost died while saving just  _one?_

"I like kids," the Rain Guardian said in a conversational tone. "They're like blank slates, you know? You just have to keep them safe, and they'll change the world someday."

"You don't know how much trouble you've caused me, Vongola," Mukuro murmured. Suddenly Yamamoto was silent, all attention. "You didn't want to wake up, did you? That was why you wouldn't heal fast enough, why your illusion took so much out of me. If I hadn't lost control back there, you would have stayed."

He would have stayed - safe and happy with Mother and Father. Five years old forever, in a celebration that never ended. It was something he wanted more than life: something that made up for his mistakes and losses. Mukuro was almost disappointed; it was an all-too-normal thing to go back to a favorite point in time, so that one could feel like nothing bad ever happened, and all one's sins have yet to be committed.

The guileless smile turned sad. "I've screwed up," Yamamoto said softly. "In everything. Not just a couple of times. And I'm going to screw up again." In the waking world, he would not have said this much. It was only here and now, when no one else was listening, and when the only other person in sight wasn't turning him away, that he could talk. "I'm sick of feeling like that - like I'll always be useless, no matter how hard I try. And I forgot - that there are people who'll accept you, no matter how many times you screw up."

Yamamoto ducked his head: a gesture of humility, of gratitude.

"You're family too, right?"

Mukuro looked at him then, and didn't see the Rain Guardian of the Vongole. Not an enemy or a comrade capable of draining his energy and forcing his hand - but a brown-eyed child named Takeshi who, for an eternal second, didn't want to let go of a teddy bear he had won.

"If you and I... if we can work together, with Tsuna and Gokudera and the rest. The things you want - maybe the truth is, we want them too. Maybe we're all the same -"

"I have nothing in common with mafia scum," Mukuro said without bile, to his own surprise.

"Hey, we're the good guys!" Yamamoto responded, backing up a little. "And you came through for me. I think that means you're a good guy too."

"That's enough." Mukuro's red right eye started to glow - but if Yamamoto noticed, he gave no sign. "I wasted my time with you, but now I'm done. I only said I would try to find you and take you back because I made a promise."

Mukuro got to his feet. 

"You know the best thing about promises, Vongola?"

Yamamoto got to his feet as well. For the first time, his face registered alarm.

"I can break mine whenever I want."

He grabbed the boy by his collar and stepped up, so their faces were close together. There was nowhere else for the Rain Guardian to look but deep into the eyes of the Mist Guardian. Before Yamamoto could reach up to try and push Mukuro away, the light in that right eye had grown stronger, brighter, and Yamamoto could see nothing but the color of blood.

"Look closely, Takeshi." Mukuro's cold voice and smile melted into Yamamoto's consciousness. "I'm going to show you a magic trick."

  
***

  
 _Mukuro-sama!_

Mukuro turned. He was making his way out of the waiting room, where he had stayed long after he had sent Yamamoto Takeshi out of his realm, back into the arms of his precious  _famiglia._  They must be hovering over him now, Mukuro said to himself, asking him stupid things, like how he was feeling, if he was all right, if there was anything they could get him.

He would give them stupid answers, and laugh, and he would be able to do it all without difficulty; such was the nature of the gift Mukuro left with him before they parted. It would not be long before Yamamoto would heal completely, without help from his illusions; Mukuro's powers did not heal, but they helped the body heal.

Since that business was concluded, and he had adequately rested, it was time for him to attend to other important things. That was when he heard his name being called.

"Mukuro-sama!"

He saw her then, coming toward him out of the mist: the pretty six-year-old who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

He let her wrap her arms around him; it was her standard greeting. She would grow out of it soon enough, he thought numbly - the time would come when she, too, would have to do his bidding.

She, too, will change the world someday.

"He's all right!" she crowed. Unable to contain her excitement she clutched at the hem of his shirt, jumped up and down as she spoke. "Oniichan is all better! You did it! I knew you would!"

Mukuro laid a hand on her head. "I promised, didn't I, Manami?"

"Yep! You did!" For a moment, she looked confused about something. Then she out and asked: "Mukuro-sama, Oniichan said... he said his offer stands. What does that mean?"

Mukuro allowed himself a brief chuckle.

"My thanks for telling me that, little one. Now there is something I must do. Stay here if you must, but be good."

After a final pat on the head, he disengaged himself from her and left her standing alone in the mist. Puzzled and just a little hurt, just a little lost, the child watched her first messiah fade from her sight.

An "offer"... in retrospect, Mukuro said to himself, as he made his way into the void of souls, toward a familiar flame, it really wasn't funny. It was a genuine proposal. Then again, Mukuro told himself, it wasn't likely he was going to come across many such things in his lifetime... so he might as well laugh at it. After all, it was part of the cosmic joke that had bound him to this hapless  _famiglia_  to begin with.

 _"I take the daytime. You take the night."_

Indeed.

  
***

  
On the other side of the world, a schoolteacher named Benedetto Greco had dozed off in his armchair, with a small boy on his lap and a storybook open on his knees. He was roused when he felt the book being taken away.

His first half-awake thought was that it must have slid to the floor. He was already reaching down to where he supposed it should have been, when he realized that the book was not on the floor as it should have been - and that the room was suddenly shrouded in mist. Moreover, there was  _someone else_  in the mist, casting an ominous shadow over Benedetto and the child fast asleep against his shoulder.

" 'The Pied Piper,' " the tall young man all in black said, one gloved hand flipping through the pages of the storybook he was holding. "Good story. Great character. Can't say much about his fashion sense, but  _love_  what he did at the end."

The sight of the young man's glowing red eye shocked Benedetto fully awake. His first reaction was to trap the sleeping child in his arms, hold him protectively close.

"You," he said feebly to the young man all in black, "haven't come to take him away, have you?"

 _Yes, I have,_  the young man was almost tempted to say, if only because he wanted to see the dread on the schoolteacher's face turn into fear and then defiance. Benedetto was not a fighting man; it would certainly be entertaining.

"You can't." Benedetto shook his head over and over. "You mustn't! He has the mind of a baby - "

"It's not his mind I need." Though Benedetto shrank from him, attempting to keep the boy out of his reach, one could only sink so deep into a cozy old armchair.

With a gentleness that surprised and at the same time frightened Benedetto, a gloved hand brushed some strands of hair back from the sleeping boy's forehead.

"Guido seems to be in better health. Well done, Benedetto. I made no mistake in choosing you."

Then the young man stepped back, giving the schoolteacher time and space to compose himself, to believe that yes - the black-clad stranger was only here to follow up on little Guido's progress. Nothing more.

The child stirred in his arms, and Benedetto immediately loosened his hold, imagining that it was the tight embrace that had awakened the poor thing. Benedetto rocked the child back and forth without leaving the chair. His eyes were pleading when he looked up at the young man again.

"I," he reluctantly began, "I have to speak very slowly to him, and even then he does not always understand. His brain has been damaged by malnutrition and beatings - he can't comprehend the simplest of texts. Basic calculation doesn't make sense to him. Will he always be like this...?"

"If I say yes, will you give him up, or love him any less?"

Benedetto did not hesitate to shake his head.

The young man smiled at him. "As I thought."

There was something in that smile that chilled the kindly schoolteacher to the bone, made him cringe at the memory of human blood and entrails strewn all over a certain room. It also made him think, for some reason, that this mysterious young man, who came to him in his dreams (for this was certainly a dream. No other conversation would feel so significant) was capable of so much more than he was allowing Benedetto to witness.

He was, for example, capable of "fixing" Guido. Of making him think and act like a normal nine-year-old child. Except he did not wish to do it, and in fact would benefit from not doing it, so he would not trouble himself to go so far.

...But Benedetto had no evidence to support these notions. Nor did he know why they occurred to him in the first place.

The young man set the storybook down on a nearby tabletop. Then he turned again to the man in the armchair.

"Benedetto," he said in a voice that did not command, or intimidate, for once. "When you tell this story to children... do you tell them the Piper is a hero, or a villain?"

The schoolteacher swallowed. Did anything important hang on this question? It certainly felt like it. So, like any honest person would, he placed his faith in the idea that the truth was the only thing that could get him off the hook.

"Neither," Benedetto Greco answered. "I tell them he's only human."

The young man didn't say anything for a while. There was no expression on his face. Benedetto imagined a range of emotions - loneliness, amusement, sorrow, dismay - flash across the young man's eyes... but if it ever happened, it happened in the space of a heartbeat, and was done.

"You needn't worry," the young man promised. "You'll have him for a long time."

Then he vanished into the mist. Only then did his shadow lift.


End file.
